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It’s Done… The Joomla 1.5 SEO Book is out Now!

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, SEO

For those who have missed my writings, this is why you did not see much blogging going on here over the last 10 months…

Joomla 1.5 SEO Book

As it is just released Packt is promoting the Book with a special discount that will expire on the 24th of Oct 2009.

So get your copy NOW with the special discount at http://www.packtpub.com/article/exclusive-discount-offer-joomla-seo before it expires.

And I promise I will start blogging about SEO again on a regular base :-)

Need more info on what you can find in my book, check out http://www.packtpub.com/joomla-1-5-search-engine-optimization-seo/book

I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

P.s. A big Thank YOU to all the people at Packt Publishing that have worked with my on the creation of this book!

Moving from Feedburner to Google Feeds and Why?

Filed Under: Blogging, Search Engine

If you are running your feeds through Feedburner, you should know that Google bought that service in 2007.
Now they are making the next step, moving the feeds from Feedburner.com to feeds.google.com.

And you have to follow… and you should do it before the end of February 2009.
How? well there is nice instruction written by Michel Martin from Pro Blog Design on How to Move from Feedburner to Google

I just moved my Feeds over to my Google account and it is really easy and you cannot !! go back!

The analytics are nice, although I cannot click on the time line anymore to go to the statistics of my readers, you now have to use a drop-down menu to choose that date.
But you can see the mail addresses of the people who subscribed via the Feedburner email option.

So that  is nice, there are however also a few drawbacks…

Even with the Smart-feed options active, you now just get a limited number of options if you want to subscribe to my feed:

Feedburner to Google losing smartfeed

So it seems Google is now cashing in on the Feedburner service and using it to promote their own services and adverts.

Why the move from Feedburner to Google feeds?

Here are some ideas that are on my mind that might be the reasons for Google to force this move upon us Feedburner users:

  • Getting the feed data into the central Google index would mean easier and faster integration into the search results pages (well that would be nice:-))
  • Monetizing the feeds by adding an easy way to integrate adsense adverts (lets see if that works?)
  • Getting more grip on spammers that use a lot of feeds via Feedburner to spam the search index
  • Promoting their own feed reader instead of giving people the choice of their favorite feed reader service
  • Promoting the use of Google personal page to integrate feeds instead of offering the option to using services like Netvibes
  • Taking away the second email subscription option and instead driving people to wards Google mail.

All these reasons will have a large impact on some of the services and companies that where integrated or build on the Feedburner service…

Can you think of any other evil and non-evil reasons, please post them in the comments.
I would love to read your ideas on the reasons for this move.

Ranking on Google is going to change in 2009

Filed Under: Search Engine, SEO

If you keep an eye on things that are happening on Google, you will find some interesting things going on at this moment.

Ranking and Google Changes

First I want to point you to two video's from webpronews.com, the first one is an interview with Bruce Clay about this presentation Ranking is Dead where is looks at how Universal search is going to effect your Search Engine Page results.

The other one is at the same site, but now an interview with Matt Cutts on some of the Changes at Google were he talks about some of the things that Bruce Clay pointed out.

From both interviews you can see that Universal Search is going to target your search result pages based on previous searches and Local Search results based on IP address.
The latter is af course already in place where Google will use IP country ranges to lead you to other Data Centers and gives local and country language specific results.

Universal search is mostly referred to as showing results based on your previous searches , but this time even if you are not logged into your Google mail account!
That might scare some privacy concerned people… take into account that Google, Live and Yahoo already have a lot of information on your search history, be it via cookies, or via your DSL Provider that gives you a nice IP address.
That IP address wil stay the same for a loooong time,which is great! For Search Engines that is…

Actually listening to Bruce Clay I find a lot of things he is predicting for 2009 are already in place, it is just the flick of a switch for Google to turn them on.

Searchwiki

One other new thing you might have seen if you are logged into your Google account and you do searches is the new Searchwiki function.

Next to each Title in the result-page there are two little icons, one for UP and one for Delete, well the last one is to actually remove that result form your own search page.
So now you can get those old or not relevant results out of your own search results, but how will this effect the total results in the long run?

I can imagine Google using those results of up and delete actions to improve results in general.
If you look at large enough numbers of people “voting” on search results you could clean up the total results and make them even more relevant and up-to-date as they are now.

Afraid of your competition “voting” your site out of the results? Don't worry, as you heard before ranking is dead anyway.
But in fact I guess Google will have some algorithm in place that will show that people are trying to play the system.

The effects on SEO

Both Bruce and Matt mentioned it in their interview, as smart SEO is looking no longer at Search Page results rankings but at Conversion and is deep into analyzing his server logs.

A smart SEO is already working on Blogs, News, Images and Video to keep up with the new upcoming personalized search results and to provide your visitors with the quality content they are looking for.

But one thing I am really looking forward too is that importance of links to your site is going to be downgraded and real quality content is getting a more prominent place in the results pages.
This time driven by your own visitors that don't have spam sites but are really liking your content. 

Weblog engines reviewed by Smashing magazine

Filed Under: Blogging, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress

Yet another great post from Smashing Magazine, this time Glen Stansberry wrote post reviewing of 10 Weblog Engines among them WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!

Af course they included MovableType and ExpressionEngine which I also tried but didn't like that much.

Looking and writing about the following aspects of each engine:

  • Programming language.
  • What features you’ll need.
  • The size of the software’s community.
  • The age of the software.
  • If you are planning on extending the Blog.

For Programming language my favorite is PHP, Like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! (and Typo3)
Features are within the core or easily integrated with Extensions like Components,  Plugins and/or Modules.
Both these Blogging platforms have very good community to support you, although Joomla! is the biggest at this moment.
Age for me is really not much of an issue but for you looking at the first release dates…
WordPress started in 2003, Drupal in 2001 and Joomla! in 2005 as a fork from Mambo that was build from 2000 (Open source Dual license in 2001)
Extending your "Blog" is really easy with all the packages I favor.

Focus on Blogging

But when it comes to Blogging, WordPress works best for me and in the Smashing magazine post Glen wrote one simple statement under Drupal and extend it later on to Joomla!
        "it’s not just blogging software. Drupal is community software. "
Which is exactly how I see it…
You can use Joomla! for Blogging and with Drupal you can do the same thing, but I just don't like the Drupal control panel that much to write blogposts.

One other great article comparing Drupal and Joomla  mentioned in the post is from Steve (Hope you get a lot of traffic from this Smashing magazine article!)  over at Alledia on Joomla and Drupal.(Needs an Update since the release of Joomla 1,5 ;-)

All in all, a nice overview of the Blogging Engine landscape of today from Smashing Magazines, and for me its good to see that Joomla now is also considered a Blogging Platform although still with some limitations.
But those limitations can be overcome with the right setting and Blogging Components for Joomla.

WordPress SEO Post and Joomla Lessons

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, SEO Articles

Joost de Valk has written a great article on his new website about WordPress and SEO, Calling it "The Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog"  and I must say, he does a splendid Job in working through all the aspects of SEO for WordPress.

And indeed the Blogging world is raving about this article as well:

Here are few links:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-seo/7096/
http://www.searchengineguide.com/sage-lewis/yoast-should-boast-its-wordpress-seo-gui.php
http://www.jaankanellis.com/wordpress-seo-in-a-nutshell-by-joost/
http://sphinn.com/story/52017

And Yoast (that's right -> Joost ) also does a great Job in monitoring all those incoming links and as a true blogger reacting on every one of them :-) 

You will know by now that I use WordPress,Drupal, Typo3 and Joomla for a number of websites, so I can related to the technical aspects of his WordPress Guide as well as the real Search Engine Optimization stuff.

And this were you can learn as an Search Engine Optimization fanatic, looking at several aspects of this guide and pick the right stuff for improving any website.
That also means Your Joomla based website.

Some of the point you can look at are:
Basic SEO

Permalinks = Search Engine Friendly URL's

Titles
Descriptions
More text
Image optimization

Than there is more advanced stuff and some great advice on coding and more, you can really do well if you follow his advice on:

Point 5 – Conversion Optimization
Point 6 – Comment Optimization
Point 7 – Off site site Blog SEO, like using Twitter SEO 

I am looking forward to implementing some of his advice here on this Blog and on my other Joomla SEO Blog

Both are build with WordPress to Promote my Joomla sites about Joomla SEO and Open Source CMS SEO

And I must say, that Joost already has inspired me to write a similar post about Joomla and SEO, that is if you as a reader would like to see that as well, covering several technical aspect on how to do this advanced and basic SEO for Joomla.

An Other great article to read is Meet Yoast in which Joost writes about the redesign and the new domain name… also read the comments like "How does it feel to commit Technorati suicide" since your Technorati rankings won't follow you to the new domain like your FeedBurner readers will.

Thank you Yoast for a great post a great new site and insight into the basic off really well done SEO!